Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Current Account Dificit Exacerbates The US Picture

Foreign exchange analysts at Deutsche Bank are on defending the Euro today, actually - again. If one puts all the Euro-area countries in one basket, then it looks better than US and UK.

Click on charts to enlarge, courtesy of Deutsche Bank.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank are sharp to highlight the "US consumer addiction" and uncompetitiveness of US manufacturing that gets visible via current account deficit:

What helps the euro more fundamentally is that the US’s fiscal balance is not much better than Spain’s and clearly worse than the Euro-areas’ (see first chart). Moreover, the longer term trajectory of the US sovereign is worse than the Euro-area’s. Our economists expect US debt-GDP to reach 260% by 2040 compared to 160% (see second chart). So just as markets have moved from Greece to Spain and now to Italy, they would likely move on to re-price the US fiscal risk premia. What exacerbates the US picture is the US current deficit.